In their books (e.g. "No Rules Rules" Netflix seems extremely attractive to creators because they pay top dollar, as a general policy, and have the internal decision-making processes that support making bold bets on art without committees that push "safer" creative choices.

I haven’t read that book so forgive the ignorant question here, but how am I to parse that title?

“No Rules Rules”, as in “no rules is awesome! It rules!”

Or

“No Rules Rules”, as in “the only rules are that there are no rules”.

The difference in interpretation matters because the tone is quite different.

And this is precisely because Netflix doesn't have to hit the jackpot with each new movie. They just have to keep people hooked on that subscription. It's one of the few times where the subscription model works best.

Yes the API process is very complex and then you have to have a team with proficiency in two parallel sets of web technologies -- python vs javascript. That said, the fact that you can go that route means that Django can be a good pick for early-stage projects where you don't need a frontend framework, because there's the optionality to add it later if your project really requires it.

To pre-empt critics of R, remember: R is a lisp!

But with a much more human legible syntax that doesn’t require huge numbers of nested parentheses.

    `+`(1,2)

is a valid R call for anyone wondering

So is this:

    `(`(1)

Bonus points: Find a use for having the parenthesis be a function.

Sneaking some very devious stuff into a friend's .Rprofile when they're not looking

That's pure evil

Fundamentally money can buy a microphone (including literally).

That said, buying airtime/ads does is not sufficient to create traction with your ideas. I have worked at plenty of foundations that spend a lot of money to "raise awareness" on various issues, which ultimately goes nowhere.

IMHO the zany, outlandish claims by Thiel, are gaining attention because of their inherent shock-value. I sent a text to my girlfriend last week, incredulous that Thiel was reported to claim the Pope is now an antichrist (¡). Definitely not because I agreed with that claim.

I think the root issue here is deep to human nature -- heightened awareness of danger, that adrenaline amygdala response. Social media helps these messages spread, but news publishers have been putting train wrecks on the front page since the 1800s. A growing handful of savvy operators, Thiel included, have learned how to manipulate this primal instinct to garner fame and influence.

I'm not sure how to change human nature. I do think that education about these tactics helps -- the magic trick is not as impressive when you know how it is done.

I find the premise of projects like Ground News -- trying to de-bias media -- really compelling.

That said, a de-biasing site isn't much help if people don't read it. Infamously, people's politically-melded worldviews are increasingly divorced for reality -- there's a famous example of people in surveys saying they "hated Obamacare" but "loved and relied on the Affordable Care Act" (for international readers: those are the exact same thing, which a simple google search would reveal).

What I have come to realize is that, at a societal level, no amount of rational discourse will counter the fear/emotional response. If it were, the world wouldnt' be in the state it is today.

Only time, reality shock or meeting a proportionate external force are the antidote. And even these can be stretched via the constant propaganda drip.

There is a great Charles Mackay quote applicable here: "Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one."

> incredulous that Thiel was reported to claim the Pope is now an antichrist (¡)

It has long been a belief of the "religious right". For decades, and their predecessors for centuries.

and given the generations of terrible absolutely un-Christian behavior by Popes in the past, they have arguments to lean on.

Joe Rogan, now's mainstream media, humble brags about hanging with Thiel on show.

Thiel very much plays the game in your second sentence, he's just smart about it. Thiel is gaining attention because he's put in the work, for a long time. Not because of shock value. And he's leveraging his soft power/contacts/PR sources/exposing his power level/drawing on what he built pretty hard now. Why?

because his blood-bag is currently the VP and he's angling for him to take over if/when Trump is declared unfit or just dies

he's exploring these esoteric tasks 1) cuz he wants to, and 2) because he knows they'll sell with the right demographics

> incredulous that Thiel was reported to claim the Pope is now an antichrist

I don’t even think the claim has shock value anymore. I have a buddy who has thought that about the last 3 popes.

Just because Thiel is saying it doesn’t mean that it is all of a sudden gaining traction. You could throw a dart at a random spot on a map of the US and probably find 10-15 preachers within a hundred mile radius of the landing spot saying the same sort of thing to their congregation at any time over the last 75 years. Certainly in aggregate reaching far more people with far more influence than Thiel could hope to with his latest efforts.

My understanding with this project is they also replace the screen and battery with newer parts e.g. higher resolution, or at least that's an option, and all the ports are new (it's a new motherboard). So really the only 'old' parts are the keyboard and chassis. My understanding is there's lots of cheap replacements for the keyboard floating out there given the mass production and the original intention for this device to be easily serviceable by IT departments instead of "RMA everything."

This is the type of rumor that could swing a stock price... I'm skeptical of how this got out there and by whom.

Languages inherently have network effects; most people around the world learn English so they can talk with other professionals who also know English, not because they are passionate about Charles Dickens.

My take (and my own experience) is that python won because the rest of the team knows it. I prefer R but our web developers don't know it, and it's way better for me to write code that the rest of our team can review, extend, and maintain.

I happen to know IBM made some great hires -- one of my classmates who was excellent in the field, who had impressive quantum computing nature publications before graduation, worked at IBM for the past several years.

Though it looks like he recently switched to working at Google AI...

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=NaxMJzQAAAAJ&hl=en

One of my colleagues read a paper about quantum computing techniques to solve complex optimization problems (the domain of complex mixed integer solvers) and tried it out for a financial portfolio optimization, replicating the examples provided by one of the quantum computing companies during a trial period.

The computer *did not* produce the same results each time, and often the results were wrong. The service provider's support staff didn't help -- their response was effectively "oh shucks."

We discontinued considering quantum computing after that. Not suitable for our use-case.

Maybe quantum computing would be applicable if you were trying to crack encryption, wherein getting the right result once is helpful regardless of how many wrong answers you get in the process.

Another way to think of this intuitively is simple economies of scale. Or volume discounts if you work in sales.

When you buy 10,000 handbags you pay the wholesale price whereas buying a single handbag can be quite expensive.

If there is way lower hose demand (volume of sales), the horse producers will have to charge a higher price per horse.

Thus, society in aggregate spends way less on horses while the price of a horse goes up.

Which interacts strangely with supply and demand and production costs, in a way that makes it often difficult to predict the final unit cost until you actually go out and try to buy something.

Chopped vegetables take slightly more labor to prepare and are worth slightly more to most people, because they're easier to use, despite usually having slightly worse flavor, so they're usually sold at a slight premium. I don't know, but if I had to guess, I'd assume they're a more popular product.

Unflavored whey protein is strictly cheaper to produce than flavored, but it's a less popular product, and usually the people looking to buy it are slightly more informed and higher income, so it's priced at a premium.

Neither of these violates the laws of supply and demand or volume discounts or anything, but you could reasonably predict any result for either of them and be wrong.

The key concept here is that the demand is mostly exogenous changes; people demand fewer horses because horses are no longer as good of a product. The whole supply/demand curve for horses shifts.